"Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse..."

except for the Native Americans, among whose ancestors are Jews cursed with black skin. According to scripture. Oops.

Stupid cult.

It's good that they're disavowing those theories. Anything that removes racism from this world is good in my book. Hopefully the church changes the rest of the racist verses in the Book of Mormon too.

It's bad that they're only pretending to disavow those theories in anonymous essays while continuing to teach children that skin color is connected to righteousness/disobedience, and that dark skin makes people unattractive.

2 Nephi 5:21 is pretty explicit:
And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.

As long as the BOM is still scripture, the cult teaches that God curses bad people with dark skin so that they'll be ugly and white people won't want to play hide the sausage with them.

Sheesh. Talk about "the choir".

.....seeing as how a major premise of the book is that native Americans' skin is dark because of the wickedness of their ancestors, the Lamanites. The difference in skin color between the Nephites and Lamanites drives much of the storylines of centuries-long wars between the two groups. If the church deleted that premise, they might as well ditch the entire BOM.

"Might as well ditch the bom."
We'll, why not? If we take the statement from the race and the priesthood essay at face value (we disavow the theories...) then essentially they are calling the bom a theory (in the pejorative sense).

.....disavowing their racist dogma re: Negroes and keep the racist dogma in the BOM because of one basic fact: most faithful church members don't possess the reasoning capacity to recognize that the BOM's racist dogma re: native Americans is as false and offensive as their racist dogma regarding Negroes is.

When enough church members wise up to that fact, the leaders will have to scramble to find a way to re-interpret the storyline to make it acceptable for future more racially-sensitive audiences.

When I used to debate this stuff with Mormon apologists, one of them argued that the Lamanite curse was being cut off from the presence of the Holy Ghost, and that the dark skin was merely the sign of the curse. In other words, he tried to downplay the skin color change angle. I replied to him that that didn't wash away the BOM's verbiage about God changing the Lamanites' skin dark so that they wouldn't "be enticing" to the "righteous" Nephites, nor the fact that the BOM repeatedly uses the phrases "white and delightsome" and "dark and loathsome."

It would be quite a task for church leaders to eliminate all of that from the BOM, without ditching the entire book.

Where's the quote from?

Their anonymous "Race and the Priesthood" essay on lds.org. http://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-the-priesthood

Mormonism has a racially diverse membership? Things really have changed since I left.

From the essay.

"The Church’s lay ministry also tends to facilitate integration: a black bishop may preside over a mostly white congregation; a Hispanic woman may be paired with an Asian woman to visit the homes of a racially diverse membership"

I'm sure that many TBMs used to believe that those silly, naive scientists proposing the most rediculous theories about skin pigmentation etc were deceived by satan.

Oops. Science speaks the truth while religion promotes harmful lies and then has to backtrack once again.

The church lies in its essays. The only honest thing for it to do is to renounce and discard the Book of Mormon.

That particular essay does more to admit that TSSC does not have any special link to deity , than anything that anyone has ever produced. It confirms what most of us have always known . They do not now , nor ever , have had any communication with a supreme being .

I agree. The first time I read that essay, I was amazed. They came right out and admitted their “prophets” don’t receive revelation from God.

“Church leaders believed that a revelation from God was needed to alter the policy, and they made ongoing efforts to understand what should be done. After praying for guidance, President McKay did not feel impressed to lift the ban.”

Based on the essay, there are only three possible explanations for the exclusion of blacks from the priesthood and the temple:
1) God was racist, but he totally changed his mind in 1978.
2) The ban was because of LDS leaders’ prejudice, but God didn’t think the matter was important enough to reveal anything to his prophets until 1978 (even when they asked for specific guidence in this matter).
3) Neither the ban, nor the lifting of the ban, had anything to do with God.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/12/2014 01:00PM by CrispingPin.

As a kid with northern european genes, growing up on a farm in utah in the 60s and 70s, sunblock was nonexistent. I spent many an hour in the summer sun bucking hay and weeding gardens and hiking timp. I'm paying for it now with my twice-annual dermatologist visits. Today, when I work outside, or play outside, I always have a wide-brimmed hat, or it's before 10:00 AM, or it's after 6:00 PM, or it's cloudy.

The sun and I are mortal enemies.

I'll take the melanin curse any day of the week.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanin

(Plus, women from latin america rock! Why would anyone want to change perfection?)

I have the same problem. The sun and I never got along. It's a congenital defect as far as I'm concerned. My ancestors must have lived under rocks to give me such a pallid visage. With the world coming together, we'll eventually interbreed and be honey-colored people. That's a good thing.

It was taught 50 times a year in the 80's that dark skin was a curse. This is nothing new. Mormonism is the one that is cursed.

The historical fact that Brigham Young taught as docterine that black skin was a curse and that a mixed marriage couple should be killed on the spot is proof that he was a false prophet. I was taught growing up that god would never allow a mormon prophet to lead the people astray, and that god would take the prophet's life before allowing the prophet to lead the people astray. Some anonymous guy on the church's official website is committing what would have been acts of apostacy (teaching false docterine) if committed just a few years ago. President Monson is hiding behind some anonymous guy as he attempts to change church docterine. There's at least one false prophet in there somewhere. That proves conclusively that the whole church is just a cult, not even a legitimate religion. If Monson had half a brain, he would stand up in general conference and announce that Brigham Young was a fallen prophet, apologize publicly for the institutionalized racism of the past, and change the name of BYU. Until he does that, he personally will carry the shame of Brigham's actions.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/12/2014 02:50PM by azsteve.

In 1977, I was a follower of Satan for denying skin color curse theory.
In 1978, I was correct in denying skin color curse theory.

This old pachyderm has a long memory, Mormon lurkers.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/13/2014 11:01PM by donbagley.

I was taught the doctrine of less valiant in the preexistence = dark skin. Learning in a college biology class that pale skin is actually a mutation (for knee jerk reaction people, the word "mutation" does not mean a bad thing here). That class was a huge wrecking ball on my shelf.

This was the straw that broke my camels back. As of last Thursday I am no longer on the records of the LDS church. I moved to CA at age 14 and my first friend happened to be black. She was amazed that I was a mormon as she had heard all the rumors about us. but I dispelled the horns and stuff. I went her baptist church one Sunday and asked her to attend my mutaul meeting on Tuesday night. In San Jose it is a long distence from where we lived in Los Gatos to downtown San Jose to the only church. My mother dropped us off and said she would return in two hours to pick us up. So my good friend and I went inside this small building and to the back for my Mutual meeting (what is is called now?). When we walked in the two sisters leading the meeting stopped talking and went out to the hall way. They came back later and said it was a change in topic and the new subject was why My Church does not allow blacks to hold the preisthood. I was so humilitated. As I heard what they were saying about the evil Cain, I looked at my new friend and saw tears. so I grabbed her hand and we ran out into the night. It was not a good part of town. We were two young girls running down a street in not a good part of town but we ran towards lights. And came to a mall on Stevens Creek Blvd and we stayed there until it was time to head back to the church. I swore I would never go back and it has taken me a years but my name as been removed thanks to a friend who gave me the bishops phone number and name. YAhoo I am free at last

Remember that Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowberry and Martin Harris were told by Joseph Smith to sell the publication of the Book of Mormon to the press in Canada. Not as a Religious document, but as a follow on to the stories that had been published and were read by the school children in Joseph Smith's time.
When they could not sell the BoM to make money, somehow it became a religious book, and good old JS used it to pander the suckers into his man-made church.

My arms got really tan this weekend. Does that mean I'm now cursed from shoulder to wrist?

My DH is way more cursed in the summer than in the winter.

My new baby grandaughter isn't cursed right now, but eventually she'll be at least as cursed as American Indians are.

As an extremely white person, i'm cursed by having to slather on sunscreen. No matter, I still have two suspicious brown spots that will be removed and biopsied.

Nothing I learned in mormonism about skin color makes sense.

I hate to give TBMs any ideas but they seem to be missing a really easy out/dodge/excuse on this one. "Ooh but it didn't mean racially dark skinned, but diseased dark skinned, like necrosis." There's a parallel in the OT (can't remember where - Exodus?) where Miriam's skin is turned white with leprosy for insulting Moses for having a black wife. Tsk, TBMs today - just not trying hard enough in their apologetics.